But my intuition tells me you are going for something even more subtle than the dancery of Bounden or the mind-trickery of DW’s TBG.

Davey Wreden once made this game called “The Beginner’s Guide” in which you play as a person sitting in front of a computer playing a fictional videogame called “The Beginner’s Guide” by the fictional Davey Wreden who exists only within the fiction of the game. It is particularly effective because you are in fact a person sitting in front of a computer playing a game called “The Beginner’s Guide” by a person (a real person, I assume) who’s name is Davey Wreden. Because of this intense similarity between the reality of your situation and the fiction of the game, many, MANY people had the experience of standing up afterwards and not knowing whether they just played a videogame about a videogame or just a videogame. I took a walk shortly afterwards, but a lot of people went to the forums and started accusing the real Davey Wreden of theft and demanding their money back from Steam. Many people reported feeling “dirty” after playing the game.

In planning to work with external systems, and to be clear this includes the insides of players’ brains, I have to accept this loss of control.

Shit happens.